


because the world wants him lost on the ground

by petrichorblue94



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Past Lives, Prophecy, R plus L equals J, Reincarnation, Soulmates, legend of azor ahai and his wife, not necessarily canon divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 07:21:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7159355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petrichorblue94/pseuds/petrichorblue94
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sansa is ten a gypsy tells her that the fates have promised her a prince.</p>
            </blockquote>





	because the world wants him lost on the ground

When Sansa was ten, she and Jeyne had snuck out of home to visit a gypsy that was passing through the lands of Winterfell. They’d paid her to tell them of their future and the old woman with honest blue eyes told Sansa that the fates had promised her a prince and songs would be written about his devotion to her. She dared not comment these words to anyone and kept them to herself, clutching them to her heart and dreaming of Joffrey Baratheon and any other golden prince the world threw at her like a dagger.

Later she curses the gypsy, she curses those promises, she curses the fates, as Ramsey Bolton kills all the private corners that those promises had resided in, she curses herself and the silence of the gods. But late at night, when she is all by herself and falling asleep at last, after the nightmares of the waking world and the nightmares when she sleeps, her heart beats wildly and it’s as if it’s whispering a name, a prayer but she can’t translate the words. She feels as if she is released and she is being murdered all at once.

Soon she learns how to save herself, becomes a warrior queen of the North, but still that heart of hers beats and proclaims grand words, yells, and for the love of all that has been worth it in the world, she can’t bring herself to understand the language of those beats. Then she sees Jon and wraps him in her arms, and Gods, he had been as broken and tattered as her.

Jon is so sweet and pure, the darkness that had tried to corrupt him somehow made his brightness sweeter. As for her, she had drowned and dreamed and her innocence and light had been smothered. Only when he leans into her – he never dares touch her, never embraces her unless she opens her arms, never caresses her cheek unless she has explicitly told him he was allowed – only then can she forget Ramsay, only then can she forget the horrors that she has fought and beaten.

And when they tell each other all that happened between _remember when_ and now, he looks at her like he wants to embrace her, hide her under his wing (but wolves don’t have wings to comfort, they have only teeth to defend), Sansa wraps her arms around his sitting form and his lips fall where her heart is and she caresses his dark curls and gods knew he has never known gentleness in this world and she has never been allowed to give it, hadn't received it herself in a long time.

The despair of her heart soothes for this second, the ice in her is burned away by his warmth, but she can’t translate this silence.

* * *

Sansa gasps air for the first time in forever and it feels like she has reborn. The water in her lungs that she throws up is salty and her eyes burn and it is a blessed feeling because it means she has survived. The shore is all desert and palm trees and her heart is pierced as she remembers:

“Jon,” she croaks, looking around, trying to cease her trembling. “Jon,” her voice breaks and she’s frantic now. Then she sees his unmoving form near the other end of the small shore and steels her legs to raise and go to him. It seems as if he's sleeping but she’s so desperate for him to open his eyes – he’s the one, the last one she has left and she’d drown the ocean and suffocate the winds for him, she’ll become a fiery beast, like he sometimes transforms for her, and burn the winter, if only he’d awake, if only she can feel his solid, quiet presence by her side again-

“Jon,” she cradles his head for a second, his wet hair, his closed eyes, too peaceful –

She moves to his at his chest, his stomach that still bears the marks of betrayal, careful of the recent wound on his side that has opened again, and she gives him the air within her lungs. His lips are salty but tender, but suddenly he starts coughing the water and she turns him around so he wouldn’t choke. Her hand is firm on his back and after he manages to breathe properly once again, he slumps backwards into her arms.

“Are you alright?” is the first thing he manages to ask, roughly, and his eyes are still closed.  

“Yes,” she whispers and presses her lips on his temple and he nuzzles into her like she’s the only thing that brings warmth and love in this world. To him, she probably is.

“Let me help,” she offers as he tries to stand up, and she is suddenly his support, her arms around his torso. “We have to go,” she tells him and the last word breaks because she is barely holding back her sobs, barely stopping the bleeding wound on his left side. “We still have to find Queen Daenerys and tell her the North has fallen, that the last ship from the Iron Islands has sunk, that we need the dragons and the swords of the Iron Throne to defeat the Night king and –”

“Sansa,” Jon says and she want to borrow her head into the crook of his neck but she looks ahead instead. “Have faith, you have to be strong if I-”

“You are not allowed to leave my side,” she tells him harshly, the voice of a Queen-commander. “You have pledged your life and loyalty to me, Jon Snow of Castle Black, and I will do with your life as I please and right now even death is forbidden to take you from me.”

* * *

They make it to the first village and Sansa sells their rich clothes in exchange for ones more suited to the heat and for a bed for the night. When Jon lies that night, he takes the flat of a red hot knife to his wound and hisses. The wound is sealed at least and Sansa looks at him, as if transfixed. Later, when he’s half asleep already, when she lies next to him, her forehead pressed against his back, breathing him in, the aliveness of him, her arms around him, she thinks that Ramsey had twisted something in her, made her half as sick as him, because she wants to fall asleep to feel of her brother’s skin against her lips each night.

But can anyone blame her for wanting to find comfort in the only person who still shows tenderness to her? It seems only a Stark can love a Stark and maybe this is what Cersei Lannister thought at first, when she was broken by Robert Baratheon.

Then Jon whimpers in his sleep and turns to her and lays his head upon her heart again and clutches her, and maybe he’s not as asleep as she’d thought but her heart swells and she wants to touch him again, just one more time, just once before he leaves her to die, as those that are gentle always do.

Her heart is beating so wildly that hours pass before she calms herself, and she knows he can hear that.

Maybe she’d had to suffer like she had, Sansa thinks as her fingers lightly start drawing constellations on Jon's bare back, hot to touch, as his breath hitches. Maybe she’d had to wander through the desert that was her old life, without food or water, to discover the water that would flow from inside the rock, maybe she’d had to break the vase that was her heart so that the wine of her love would flow to him and find him.

* * *

They are a few hours away from meeting the Queen in her throne room when a fire breaks in the chamber she and Jon sleep in (they had different rooms but she sneaks into his bed, grown unused to sleep without him by her side, the marble halls too imposing and unfamiliar and threatening for her).

The door is locked from the outside. She awakes to the smoke, the light, the sounds of fire eating away all that could burn and Jon can’t awake, no matter how much Sansa shakes him, he’s burning in a different way, and after a minute of stupidly trying to push the marble door by herself, Sansa starts yelling for help.

The smoke causes her to lose consciousness a few minutes later. Her last thought is that she doesn’t expect to open her eyes again, that she must bid goodbye to life now.

When she wakes up, green eyes lock with the blue ones of a beautiful woman.

“Jon?” she asks first, because even in death, she expects Jon to be by her side.

“He’s in the other room, my healer is tending to him, and the culprit will face execution after questioning,” queen Daenerys tells her; Sansa suddenly realizes that she is very much alive. “You were very brave, both of you, on your quest to find me.”

“He told you?”

“He told me everything,” Daenerys says and pauses. “He awoke when you had already fainted and shielded you from the fire with his body while the flames swallowed his back.”

Sansa listened, horrified. “Is he al–”

“The fire had swallowed everything, long before aid came. But by then he’d managed to destroy the door with his sword and get you out of there ” the queen said and paused again, as if to purposefully prolong the gasping knives in Sansa’s heart. “It is not everyday you find you are not the last living member of your family, but I suppose you should know that by now.”

Silence settles then, as Sansa considers the meaning of those last words. Jon, a Targaryen? For a moment she runs her mind through all the knowledge she has of the royal house. Then:

“You will not take him away from me,” Sansa says and her voice is firm and cold, as she looks at the beautiful queen of fire. “He might be a part of your family too but he’s _mine_.”

Daenerys smiles. “I know. But this is not a time for the childish jealousy of a young girl, Lady Sansa. Jon is my kin and you are his and now is the time to plan war.”

Sansa visits him later that day, her eyes seize his, and her hand grasps his carefully.

“I promised you I’ll never leave you,” Jon says with a warm smile that fails to hide the excitement behind his eyes. “I bowed before you and swore to you that I’d do everything for you and if I had to use my own body as a shield from fire, then so be it.”

Then Sansa does the unthinkable, the improbable: she bends her knee and kneels by his bed. “Sansa?” he asks. “Please, stand…” She lowers her head because if she looks up she might cry.  _He’d stayed_. He had never yielded, he had remained. “If this is because of me being Targaryen, this changes nothing. I will still serve you, my loyalty will never be to another.”

“I’m not doing this because you are the rightful king, Jon,” Sansa says. “I’m a queen and for as long as I’ve been such, I have never bowed and will never bow to any ruler.” She finally allows herself to look at him. “I’m doing this because your love has conquered me, long before your name.”

Jon looks at her then, really looks at her and there is so much emotion in his dark eyes, and his adam’s apple wobbles and his free hand covers hers and brings it to his lips. “For so long,” he said at last. “I thought that I was lost, that my mind was twisted to want you, and still as if there were worlds between my skin and yours that existed only when we touched –” His voice catches.

She pulls her hand away from his only to caress his features and he leans into her again, closes his eyes.

There are no more words needed now, even if later they’d have to talk - they had so much to say.

She presses her forehead against his but doesn’t close her eyes, instead drinking him in from so near. The sun caresses them now and for a second Sansa wonders if it is wrong of her to steal this one moment of tenderness before the next battle in the never ending war.

* * *

Later, when they are sitting together with Daenerys and their  allies, Tyrion asks:  “I never realized how you managed to break a  _marble door_ with a sword,” he said with raised brows.

“I didn't break it,” Jon begins and looks at them all with an odd expression. “The sword was simply in my grasp at one moment, as if I’ve called upon it, and I’ve never seen it, but I have known it... And as soon as it touched the door, both the door and the sword disappeared.”

A long moment of silence passed, uncharacteristic for Tyrion. “... So you think you can call upon it again? Because it _sure_ sounds handy.” 

“I might,” Jon said after thinking for a moment, feeling for the truth in the corners of his mind. “If it is to protect Sansa.”

 _"Azor ahai."_ They all turned to the young woman in red that appeared by the door, her hand resting on the frame as if for support. “I didn’t believe Melisandre then but it _is_ you,” she said. “You are the prince that was promised, Jon Snow.”

And the world might collapse upon itself from the way it has changed its axis for one day, but Sansa is peculiarly silent and when Jon looks at her – lost, confused, hopeful, afraid, proud, _searching_ – she grasps his hand in hers and finally it is as if the world has been spinning wrongly all along and only now has everything fallen in place.

**Author's Note:**

> 1/So basically Sansa is the reincarnated version of Azor Ahai's wife, Nissa Nissa, and the sword is shielded in her soul. As she had died in her past life for the weapon to become forged, in this life the fates have sought equilibrium and the weapon is meant to be wielded by Azor Ahai's reincarnation, to protect her.  
> 2/I'm writing this when I'm super sleep deprived and it is very late into the night, so if there are any mistakes here, just roll with them and move to the next fic.  
> 3/Partially inspired by the translation of the song Bajo el Sol by Adriana Mezzadri.


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